Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Kill Team list ideas

A word of advice about building a Kill Team, your team needs as much killyness as possible, so there is no reason to take most troops choices unless you really want to. Kill Teams are elite units (not necessarily elite FO choices) sent on a special missions, with this in mind, make sure that you focus on the elite feel that the team should have.

I ran your Chosen team against the Space Marine equivalent of your terminator team. Basically, my friend forgot to bring his own minis and used my Salamander 5 man Assault Terminator squad. Should have a bat report up soon about that one!

While I think the elite (and Elite) style of play can work and work well, I don't think there's anything wrong with Troops or hordes. A number of books have basic troops that are pretty good, and with a lot of cover available you can minimize one of the main weaknesses of most hordes, namely lousy armor saves, and with more models on the field you can make the law of averages fight in your corner. An elite force can get screwed by a few bad rolls that kill a few guys off, where a horde will just shrug and pile on more. Another corollary weakness of hordes, getting a bunch killed at once in CC either through direct kills and combat resolution, is mitigated too. Avoid multiple assaults, let their elite kill machine squish one guy, then light him up.

Whether or not to take special weapons and upgrades or not IMO largely depends on what your group decides in regards to taking vehicles and how they work. If you're not going to see a dread, less reason to take a meltagun.

Something like Kroot are IMO great. Cheap, decent BS and a bolter-equivalent, good WS/S and attacks via the rifle. With plentiful cover they can hunker down and plink if needed. With no time limit, they don't have to expose themselves needlessly. Their morale only matters once you plow through half of them, instead of seeing a dozen run down by a single assault marine or getting pinned. In 200 points you can take like 28 of these guys, or if you prefer, fewer and back them up with a crisis suit or some stealths.

For a more elite but still Troops-based list, something like a Noise Marine squad could be good. Ten stock NM gives you a good body of I5 CSM, kitted out pretty well off the shelf. If you want to fancy them up and are worried about things like termies, you could try eight including champ with PW, and two sonic blasters. Furious Charge on champ for S5/I6 charges, Relentless on one sonic blaster for being able to use heavy mode on the move, and maybe stealth on the over so he can sit snugly in overwatch.

I agree with Son of Taurus on the Kroot as a merc unit. A Shaper (Furious charge), 2 krootox (relentless & Slow & Purposeful) & fill in the rest with some grunts. As an added bonus, there's none of those pesky Tau around to interfere with the post game feast!

I was also thinking of 2 penal legion squads backed up by a sentinel with multi-laser & smoke launcher For the IG. Give the over seers Furious charge & fleet, and tank hunter to the sentinel, and to avoid confusion, only make 1 roll for the 2 penal units as they'll be all mixed together. As a whole they're not elite, rather a completely disposable 'forelorn hope' unit.